


Bones to the flames

by Yoruhime



Series: Fire and ashes [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU from Season 4, Disturbia series related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 06:50:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12743193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yoruhime/pseuds/Yoruhime
Summary: Derek hasn't lived that long by not recognizing when he's outclassed in combat, and this time is not exception : when the second berserker's shadow appears in the newly-made hole, he whirls above the sofa, sending it flying in the legs of the closest enemy in passing, and promptly throws himself out of the balcony window.





	Bones to the flames

**Author's Note:**

> Hi ! I know, it's been quite a while, one more, but as I said, I do intend to finish this.  
> So if anyone is still following this little series... enjoy !

Derek is on his feet in a second, eyes flashing a savage, wild blue.

He knows this scent, this strange, too-deep growl, almost covered by the sound of bones clattering together. He heard it when he was in the tomb, smelt the rot and the hint of something undoubtedly feral all the way to the surface. 

It's impossible to mistake, and despite his still chilled, weary state, his wolf rises its hackles right up, snarling and growling at the presence of the enemy. Predator but not quite, animal but beyond it, driven by a indescribable, frenzied fury. The young man actually has to force himself to not recoil. It's not the fear – he saw worse – but there's something so deeply _wrong_ with these being, the same kind of inflicted, untamable madness he saw in Peter once, after the fire.

“Do werejaguars often drive their servants to animalistic rage ?”

Peter has risen, too, neon blue eyes narrowed at his door. He looks a great deal more offended by the trespassing than afraid for his life, and Derek has to fight a smile. Mad in un-alike ways, yes, but not that different in the end. 

The being that rams the door down – to Peter's hiss of distaste – is big enough that it has to further destroy the frame to get in. Derek shows his fangs, vaguely amused by the image of the giant... thing, spiky with the broken bones of its armor and yet stupid enough to get inside the loft, despite the place putting it so clearly at disadvantage in the narrow space.

He gathers on himself, fangs and claws lengthening. The head, forearms and upper-chest – as well as the back, probably – are protected, but the chest is left bare alongside the sixth rib or so, giving it a look reminiscent of a Viking warrior, or close. Whatever. Derek pushes the thought away, concentrating on his fight : if he manages to get a hit under the ribcage, he'll be able to literally rip the heart out of the damn thing.

“They're not as slow as they look”, murmurs Peter at his left. “Far from it. And the actual ribs are still under their skin – and believe me, even the natural bone structure has been toughened by the berserker magic they're under. Incredibly hard to break. I know what you're thinking, but it won't work.”

Derek would gladly ask how the hell he knows, or maybe how the hell to kill it, then, but with a seemingly impossible speed for a being of its height and weight, the berserker lunges at him, eyes blazing under the skull, long, deadly claws aiming right for the young wolf's throat.

The way it moves, the strength behind the blow, are phenomenal, breaking the wall all the way up to the roof on half its length when Derek dodges – barely. It was sheer instinct, of combat, of adrenaline, and, maybe, of trust in Peter, at least in the current situation. But still. He didn't react in time. He simply had started to move away before the enemy jumped at him : it was luck and wolf's reflexes, but if he has to do it once more... it will be nothing but thrown dice, or almost.

Derek hasn't lived that long by not recognizing when he's outclassed in combat, and this time is not exception : when the second berserker's shadow appears in the newly-made hole, he doesn't hesitate one second. He whirls above the sofa, sending it flying in the legs of the closed enemy in passing, and promptly throws himself out of the balcony window.

He catches his fall in a crouch, and, warned by some instinctual urge, keeps rolling away rather than get back up. The earth shakes with the impact of the blow behind him, and Derek doesn't doubt that it was aimed right at his head. As it is, even the simple bast of air is enough to make him lose his equilibrium, forcing him to an awkward slide to break his own momentum.

The powerful claws he digs in the ground allow him to pivot and end his evasive movement facing the berserker, not that it helps overmuch. Damn, with the smell of rotting flesh all over the place and the sound of the bones, he didn't even felt the thing coming at him before he ended up almost skewered.

His Gift pulses in his chest, like a reminder he doesn't need that he can flee the place easily. Too easily, even... if Kate sent the berserkers, if she guessed to find him at the loft, what else does she knows ? Derek steps back, slowly, still half-crouched, thinking as fast as he can. The Kate that put him in the tomb is the Katherine of this world, of that he has no doubt.

The Katherine that – theoretically – knows nothing about Gifts – or at the very least, knows nothing about his. And yet... the madness he smells on the monstrous being facing him is clearly made so. Wanted, used to make the bersekers the wild killing machines that they are. If Kate has learned enough to create those frenzied warriors, then maybe she has learned much more about magic.

He met one witch, a few months back when he had fled from Peter – she acted like a void, ripping any active magic coming in her presence to steal it. Admittedly, the tree branch through the chest had taken care of her, but Derek still remembers the terrible emptiness of his stolen Gift, like something as vital as his wolf had been ripped out of him.

Yeah, once had been enough.

And besides, difference of strength aside, the day he can't lose his trail in the BC forest is the day he goes to a Hunter and gets himself shot. Derek forces the instinct to teleport down in favor of a more wolf-like way of getting the hell out of dodge, namely plunging into the deep bushes at his left. 

He rolls with the steep ravine to end up on his feet, and goes back to his run without the slightest faltering in speed. Peter has disappeared, too, not that Derek's overly surprised. His uncle never was one to fight battles for someone else, and even less someone he barely knows or trusts. Still, between him or his uncle, the berserkers don't even pause in their chase : Derek all the way.

In any other circumstances, he'd be flattered.

The young wolf dodges gracefully under a branch, sliding on the forest floor before taking a sharp left, but the enemy follows the sudden change of direction with an impressive suppleness for such a gigantic being. Derek swears under his breath, but serves again : the zig and zag isn't enough to shake his pursuers, but it allows him to keep enough of a headsta... son of a bitch !

He barely throws himself to the right in time. The bone blade of the forearm misses his thigh but slashes his upper shoulder, dangerously close to his neck. He bounds over a rift, catching the rocky edge of the other side and rolling over it. For a second, he believes he shook the berserkers off, but the shadow rising in his way a few meters ahead quickly makes him change his mind.

The berserker attacks, and between the cliff at his back and his charging adversary, Derek can only doge around the blow et start running at full speed on the left, right into the trees and wild nature. The brambles catch at his clothes and flesh, painful but not enough to stop him. It does slow him down, though, and he almost falters in surprise when he notices that the berserkers... don't follow. 

Or, more specifically, follow but have stopped attempting to catch up – which, given their speed, is outright counterproductive... unless they're steering him right into an ambush. Derek throws a glance around, and blinks when he recognizes the direction he's taking. Right towards the Great Cliffs.

The steepest natural wall of the BC in-state on the front, four berserkers behind. Heh. Talk about dead-end. He scans the forest, notes at least three dive-exits (the plunge into the river below, a two-hundred meters or about to his left if he doges between the monsters n° 1 and 3 ; the strong canopy of solid branches and evergreen, where he doubts the berserker's mass would allow them to follow him into ; the narrow cavern when he took refuge into with Peter all these years ago, from which he can teleport out of view before the beasts manage to get in after him).

Derek smiles, and keeps running at moderate pace. No need to sprint, after all. Kate certainly waits for him in her clever trap, and she always loved punctuality. Not to mention, he wants a few minutes to recover before he fights her for good : Peter got the final kill years ago, and he deserved it, but... well, it's not like Derek have the pleasure of ripping Katherine Argent's throat out, too.

Each his turn, after all.

**

“Hello, Katherine. I'd ask how you are, but... I don't like small talk that much.” 

Kate is too much of a trained Hunter to show surprise, but her scent spikes with it, unmistakable – and even more so when Derek doesn't deign flinch with the berserkers placing themselves at his back, effectively blocking his exit. “So you're really different”, she muses. “I wasn't certain.”

“Different... from ? The spell's result you hoped for ? Or the transformation in berserker ? Is that what you wanted, Katherine ? Make me one of them ?” She stares at him a second before laughing, earnestly amused if her scent is anything to go by.

And speaking of scents... there's something strange with hers. He knows her skin, her perfume – cool, clean, _sharp_ like a winter blade – even her sweat, when her damp flesh gave away the hint of gun oil, powder and blood that he didn't recognize at the time. Too much perfume, and him too worried about Peter, the Hunters, not paying attention where he should have. But he's no longer a kid stupidly attracted and stressed by fighting for stability in his life. And he definitely doesn't like what his nose is telling him.

Death and rage and fear and... beast. If they weren't against the wind, he could almost believe he's mistaking the berserkers' scent with hers. But, no. Even then, it's different : death on the monsters at his back is the death of dust, graves and bones. The death of putrefaction and rot. Kate's scent is death on another level, strangely... familiar.

Death, but life. Change, if it makes sense. Her old scent – the one he disgustedly still remembers after all this time – is here, under the much more pregnant smell of – weirdly enough – feline, and this hint of something deeper, predator and human and different...

_Shifter,_ he understands with horror at the moment she retorts with evident disgust, “Please, like I'd want you fighting for me.” Derek doesn't bother answering, still reeling from the realization – the one he should have seen coming a lot sooner. Peter had even said it, point blank. _The temple Scott found you in was devoted to worshiping the Naguals. The werejaguars, if you prefer._

“But you can still be of use. Open the Hale vault for me, and I'll let you go,” Kate goes as far as lowering her shotgun towards the ground... which, considering that the berserkers are still here, is about as useless as it can go in the “gesture of peace” category. Derek's not sure if he's amused or offended that she'd think he's stupid enough to fall for it ans strike a bargain. 

_Yeah, right. I'll let you go if you show me you back, too, sweetheart._

But he doesn't say anything, garbing the few more seconds given by his lack of answer. His plan of tearing her throat off just got blindsided by a mile : even if he takes her by surprise – and he knows he can – a shifter doesn't go down so easily. And one strike is probably all he'll get before the monsters jump on his sorry ass.

A Hunter, he would have ripped the heart off by teleporting behind them, confident they wouldn't be able to react in time. A jaguar shifter, which is a species he knows nothing of ? Yeah, bad news, especially with the closest berserker standing four feet away from Kate. Life-threating situation, he'd take the risk in a heartbeat. Now ?

“Oh, I don't think so, Kate. But you can always try and open it by yourself, if you're that desperate. Back to the BC school... it should bring back fond memories, shouldn't it ?”

Her eyes go electric green under the rage spiking in her scent, et for a second, Derek sees her skin darken to a pale purple marked with even darker slashes and uneven spots. Deep black on this strange violet-grey hue, like the marred fur of a very strange jaguar. Derek decides he has seen more than enough : with barely a shimmer of distorting space, he's gone.

The closest Berserker's blow hits nothing but air.


End file.
